Lady Aggies’ have spectacular 2024 season

Special to the JR

HAMILTON — The Hamilton Lady Aggies Track & Field team may not have been able to grab a state championship title for their team, but they are still a team of champions.  
They have proven themselves with a strong winning streak and some dominant athletes, but most people are not really aware of what these girls have achieved.
The winning streak began in 2021, which was a turning point for the Hamilton Track & Field program. Post-COVID, this was the year Coach Steve Dudley got involved and started recruiting athletes and helping them learn how to best perform. That season, the Lady Aggies placed first in the Marion County Championship as well as their section meet, which is the qualifier for state.
The winning streak continued as the girls took the top spot in both meets for the 2022, 2023 and 2024 seasons. The most recent sports team at Hamilton to have a similar streak would be the Lady Aggies Basketball team, who shares a few athletes between the sports.
 This group of girls is a perfect example of competing as a team. The Lady Aggies won by a mere three points, and the outcome wasn’t determined until the very last event of the meet.
With individual finishes from first to eighth, the girls contributed to the point total and helped gain the victory. Since 2021, only a couple of girls have graduated, so this is really the core group to have competed the last four years.
Distance runner Maya Jones has been a solid competitor in the distance events and in cross country, leading that girls team as back-to-back section champions in 2023 and 2024. She was also voted onto the North All-Star Cross Country Team.
Maya is also the team leader of the 4x800 relay team. It should be noted the other runners on that relay team are a seventh grader, Bristol Evans, and two eighth graders, Jane and Anne Wiginton. Despite the age difference, they still managed to finish in the sixth place spot this season, and the Wiginton twins have already qualified individually for events at the state level.
Speaking of middle-schoolers, eighth grader Taylor Biggerstaff is the ladies only pole-vaulter, and she competes in running events, as well. Javelin throwers Myia Sizemore and Bella Gilstrap continue to improve every season, as does Ella Rose Bartlett, the teams only shot putter.
Jordan Parker is a great all-around athlete who can compete in throwing, jumping and running events successfully. Gracie Sanderson and Sarah Grace Harbor are both dependable runners who have competed in a variety of running events from the relays to the 400m dash. Due to injury or conflicting sports schedules, other athletes, such as Aubrey Sorrells and Madelyn Hulsey, were not able to compete this season and were sorely missed.
Without the contribution of each of these athletes, the team would not have performed as well as it did. However, there are two female Aggies who have exceeded expectations and have impressive records of their own: Meg Wiginton and Kyra Casey.
Meg Wiginton is a 2024 senior who has competed with the Aggies at every state level event since she was in seventh grade, which is true of most of the female athletes.
After the 2020 season was cancelled by COVID, she made her first trip to the podium in ninth grade in the 300m hurdles, and has accumulated nine state medals since then in indoor and outdoor competition. This includes two back-to-back state champion titles for the 300m hurdles in 2023 and 2024.
Her PR and winning time of 45.11 seconds ranked her as fifth in the state (1A-7A) for that event in 2024, and she is the only female Aggie to hold a state top 10 ranking. She has also shown her versatility by competing in the indoor state pentathlon, where she placed seventh in the state, and in the outdoor state heptathlon where she placed sixth in the state.
In March, Meg committed to run track at the University of Tennessee at Martin, a NCAA Division-1 school that competes in the Ohio Valley Conference. It is also noteworthy that while excelling athletically, Wiginton has also maintained an academic record that has earned her an academic scholarship to UTM in addition to the salutatorian spot in her graduating class.
As a rising junior, Casey has already achieved an impressive record for herself. Her first podium appearance was in her eighth grade year with the 4x400 relay team. She has since accumulated eight state medals in indoor and outdoor competition, including two state champion titles in 2024 for both long jump and triple jump.
She is also a versatile athlete who holds school records for both jumping and running events. With two more years of competition left, Casey is on track to be one of the most successful athletes in school history. Her versatility in events combined with her athleticism definitely makes her an athlete you will want to keep your eye on.